Welcome to our new blog — Reinventing Transit
April 22, 2009 | Posted by Edward Burgess in Transit Innovations
Greetings travelers! Coinciding with the release of our new report, Reinventing Transit, we're excited to announce the latest EDF blog. It is appropriately titled: Reinventing Transit.
Much like the report itself, the intent here is to highlight some of the innovations in transit happening around the country. While our Living Cities team was putting this report together we quickly realized that there were way too many interesting projects to feature in a single document. So instead we opted to start with a handful of examples and go from there.
We picked examples that we thought captured the breadth and variety of modern transit in America – a snapshot of communities designing successful, creative solutions to match their needs. But now through this blog we'd like to continue expanding that knowledge-base as we learn about new and different projects. Plus, this will give us a chance to fill in some details that we didn’t have room for in the report proper.
As we launch this discussion and explore different projects, we’ll also be returning to a few key themes. For example:
- What are the costs and benefits of transit, both economic and environmental?
- How can transit be tailored to different settings (e.g. rural areas, suburbs, cities of all sizes)?
- How are new technologies being used or creative ideas being applied?
- What are the barriers to implementation and how can they be overcome?
- Are any of these ideas scalable, either by expansion in their current location or to other locations?
- What do the riders say about their own experiences? Are people changing their travel behavior?
A brief disclaimer: The purpose of this blog is not to serve as a final authority on transportation policy. Nor does anyone at EDF endorse any of these projects as ultimate solutions. But we do think some of the ideas discussed here provide a compelling vision for a future transportation system that is less energy intensive and less polluting, while providing economic benefits to communities of all shapes and sizes.
As a final note, we'd like to encourage readers to help educate us and spread the word about new ideas. If you work for a company or agency that you think has an example of innovative transit, or if you are a transit rider and have an experience to share, please contact us at transit@edf.org.
9 Responses
Comment from paul page
April 24th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
The Kings County project is a great example of good old-fashion reinventing government by uniting a governmental function — transit to the underserved — with a partially-privatized operating model. Finally, a reliable and workable transit model.
Comment from Jarrett
April 27th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Please see my review of the EDF document at http://www.humantransit.org
Cheers, Jarrett
Comment from Jerry Schneider
April 28th, 2009 at 11:28 am
I am disappointed that your report did not mention the many innovative transit systems that are now being developed around the world today. Reinventing is the required term as the conventional transit systems you review cost far too much and cannot come close to making a significant dent in "the problem". Huge investments in light rail systems have been shown over and over to make about as much difference in the ever increasing negative effects of high levels of automobility as tearing a page from a telelphone book. Where are your evaluations of ULTra, Vectus, SkyWeb Express, MegaRail, MicroRail, Cybertran, Monomobile, SkyTran and many many other systems that show real promise for being high performance, environmentally benign, as well as cost-effective and a better fit for our dispersed metropolitan areas that exhibit very diffuse travel patterns? MASS TRANSIT (big box) is not appropriate for serving the needs of the significant suburban-to-suburban travel patterns that are tne dominate feature of daily travel in today's metropolis. I find your report to be largely oriented to band-aids, and not appropriate to the scale and extent of the serious challenges presented by the transportation needs of current and future urban travellers.
Comment from Ian Ford
April 28th, 2009 at 11:54 am
There is a whole professional association devoted to reinventing transit – the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA). There is a wiki site and active email list that explores all of this and much more. I hope readers of this will also contribute to ATRA. Details at advancedtransit.org, and the wiki is accessed from a link on advancedtransit.net.
Comment from avidor
April 28th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Wonder where all the PRT pod people came from? …. this their wacky gadgetbahn forum:
"What you don't want to do is vent. EDF is clear that not all
technologies are included in the report. On the report's welcome
page, it reads–
"we quickly realized that there were way too many interesting projects
to feature in a single document. So instead we opted to start with a
handful of examples and go from there."
What you want to do is confer with each other offline and agree on a
way to approach EDF in a unified way.
EDF needs to hear automated transit as a comprehensive policy option,
not as a number of competing proprietary systems. I suggest ATRA
would be a good umbrella."
Comment from Jarrett
April 29th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Well, the answer to Mr Schneider and Mr Ford as that EDF's particular 'reinvention' is about short-term solutions. The point is to motivate people who are tired of debates about large-scale technologies that would take decades to deliver even if it were possible to build the consensus for them. There's a need for creative thinking at all time-scales, and EDF's work is useful in motivating cities to solve transit problems NOW, which means using the tools at hand.
Comment from Edward Burgess
April 29th, 2009 at 6:50 am
Jerry, thanks for your criticism. And Jarrett, thanks for clarifying — I think you explained our intentions well.
Part of the criteria for selecting these projects was that they had to be operating already. None of these projects are theoretical ideas or pilot demonstrations — they are all fully fledged, operational parts of our transit system. While we are looking to the future, this report is about projects that have already been proven today and can be expanded upon or replicated within a few years. And Reinventing Transit is just the beginning. With the right federal priorities that promote the experimentation seen in these examples, perhaps we could usher in a whole new generation of efficient transportation technologies not yet in practice.
Another criterion we chose was to limit our scope to the U.S. I'm well aware that better examples of modern transit may exist in other places around the world, but part of the goal was to find examples that would resonate with most Americans and show how transit is already successful in many places right here in the U.S.
Comment from Michael D. Setty
May 6th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I wish the advocates of PRT and other allegedly "innovative" solutions could "cool their advocacy jets" another several months, and wait and see how the Heathrow PRT system performs after it opens in late 2009. Depending on how that performs, they will, or will not, have something "proven" to argue about.
BTW, "innovative" can include creative use of existing proven technology, such as Portland's use of streetcars to stimulate real estate development and as a downtown shuttle system.
It would also do justice to the cause of ATRA et al to also stop using the "obsolete technology" meme, since to do so is discrediting; rail may be "19th Century technology" but concrete is 1st Century Roman technology, but is hardly obsolete.
Comment from PRT Strategies
May 12th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Burgess: PRT's been operating successfully, carrying millions of passengers accident-free for over 30 years in at West Virgina University in Morgantown, West Virginia.
You might do well to research the Morgantown tab on our website (www.prtstrategies.com), or search YouTube, or just google it. There's plenty of information available on this successful implementation.